Pretty soon, Samsung can earn the reputation of the “foldable” company. Recently, the South Korean electronics maker has demonstrated a prototype of the first folding smartphone with a flexible screen, which is expected to enter the market early next year. However, the Koreans will not stop there. The device is the size of a tablet and folds three times to form a rather thick smartphone. It appeared from a recently published patent.
It is not difficult to understand why Samsung decided to adopt a more traditional folding smartphone design for its first attempt. The company must not only first check the market sentiment, but also ensure adequate functioning of the device. When you are dealing with a flexible, folding screen, you will never be too careful.
Of course, this will not prevent Samsung from dreaming big. This new patent, published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), is definitely one of its more ambitious ideas. Unlike the prototype shown last week, which received one large flexible OLED display and one standard external OLED panel (it works like the main one when the smartphone is folded twice), the conceptual device has a single screen that, with any addition, remains active. It remains open to users by 2/3 or 1/3. The secret is that this device has two loops that allow you to bend in the opposite direction. When bent, one of them creates an external screen. The other one is bent on the screen, protecting it.
Of course, the technology is quite raw, and the size of a folding smartphone will be three times larger than usual, but perhaps this is the start of a new type of device. However, there is a possibility that the concept will remain a dream, embodied only on paper. Meanwhile, designers have already fantasized about the flexible Samsung smartphone, which will be released in 2019. That is because the company did not want to reveal the appearance of the future gadget ahead of time.
